


Murder Be Thy Name

by skepticseptic



Series: Lee's Demon Shane AU [3]
Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Demon!Shane, M/M, takes place after Don't Be Afraid, the demon actually makes an appearance this time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-08
Updated: 2018-02-20
Packaged: 2019-03-15 16:13:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13616964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skepticseptic/pseuds/skepticseptic
Summary: Shane lost the fight, and his body was no longer his own. He became merely a passenger, watching through his own eyes as the demon took control. He could only hope that the demon wouldn't hurt Ryan.





	1. The Devil's At Your Door

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was inspired by the song [I'm Always Walking As Somebody Else](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ve_-ORU_4Xs) by American Murder Song, suggested to me by Jace!
> 
> This was written for Don't Be Afraid hitting 4000 hits yesterday!

                “This week on Buzzfeed Unsolved, we investigate the gruesome murder of Daley Langer, one of the most recent mysterious murders that have come to light.” Ryan began. They were filming the next season of True Crime videos, this one to be the season premiere. This one was also one of the few that they were able to go on location for, only a short road trip away from L.A. Shane fiddled with his signature red pen as Ryan read through the details of the case in his narrating voice.

                “On the 20th of September, 2010, the body of Daley Langer was found in his basement by a concerned neighbor who hadn’t seen him leave in about 3 days. The body was disfigured nearly beyond recognition, the neighbor describing it as “…almost as if he were attacked by a wild animal…” Later examination by a medical professional offered few additional clues, but there was something particularly interesting about the report. “Curiously, the bruising and internal damage of the throat of the deceased is similar to that of someone who was lifted completely off of the floor. This is extremely abnormal, as many people cannot pick up an average size adult male, much less by the throat only.”

                “So, are we looking for a bear then? Cause that sounds like a bear or something.” Shane interjected while Ryan was taking a breath before starting the next section. Ryan put down the paper he was reading from, a thoughtful look on his face before responding, “I mean, I’m pretty sure they’d be able to tell if it was a bear? Bears aren’t even common in that area anyway.”

                Shane mulled it over for a minute, finding the reasoning acceptable and motioned for Ryan to continue. Ryan slipped easily back into the voice, and Shane listened absentmindedly.

                “According to police reports, there was evidence that Langer was conducting secret occult rituals in his basem-”

                “Wait, wait, wait, hold that thought for a minute, _what_? This is True Crime Ryan, not Supernatural!” Shane interrupted. This sounded more like a case for the other season, and he was curious why Ryan chose this one.

                “Yea, but a dude actually got murdered so… I think it still works?” Ryan shrugged. They didn’t usually do cases that crossed over to Supernatural, but Shane guessed this was going to be one of those special exceptions for one reason or another. Ryan cleared his throat, and continued reading.

                “Additionally, bloody footprints were found leading from the body out to the front door. Unfortunately, it had rained over the weekend and completely obliterated any evidence that could be found outside. They also found…”

                In the blink of an eye, Shane found himself in another time, another place. He was running blindly through a forest, the darkness engulfing him and his surroundings. Rain pounded down around him, filling his ears with a roaring sound as he sprinted among the trees. Puddles splashed with each step, sending shocks of cold water up against his legs, but he didn’t stop. Lightning flashed nearby, lighting up the scene just enough for him to see black bloody claws in front of his face, pushing away branches from hitting him.

                “-ane? Earth to Shane!” Ryan’s voice pulled him out of the random daydream, bringing him back to reality.

                “Hm?” Shane hummed out in reply, still not quite sure what happened.

                “You okay big guy? You were staring into space for a little bit there.” Ryan commented as he fiddled with the stack of papers on the desk in front of him. Shane could read him like a book though, and could see that he was concerned.

                “Yea, I’m good I was just thinking about stuff.” Ryan nodded at Shane’s answer and cleared his throat before continuing. He ran through a couple theories, ranging from an unstable ex to the work of a questionable local group. Shane wasn’t sure if it was just intuition, but something felt off about all the theories, he knew to some extent that none of them were what actually happened. He didn’t want to look into that too much, so he turned to Ryan with a cheeky grin on his face.

                “What, no aliens this time?”

                “Haha, very funny Shane.” Ryan grabbed Shane’s pen as he got up from the table, playfully throwing it back at him from just beyond the edge of the camera’s view. Shane dodged it, the pen clattering against the floor as it rolled off. As he went to retrieve it, Ryan and a couple of the crew members discussed the plans for the shoot the following morning. Once everything was confirmed, Ryan turned to talk to Shane.

                “Let’s get this stuff packed up so we can go to the house tomorrow morning.” He said, a tired smile on his face. It’d been a day packed full of work, a lot of video editing and script writing going on for the new season. They made quick work of packing the cameras and audio equipment and hauled the bags out of the building to Ryan’s car so that they wouldn’t need to stop by the offices before leaving.

                With the last bag securely in Ryan’s trunk, he bid Shane farewell. He drove off with a wave, heading back home to get a bit of sleep before the day of shooting ahead of them. Shane walked back into the building to retrieve his things from his desk before doing the same, taking a quick walk back to his apartment nearby. The sun was setting as he walked, casting soft pinks and oranges onto the clouds that lazily floated through the blue sky.

                Shane tossed and turned, the nightmare taking hold. He was back in the forest from earlier, still running, the rain stinging his face and thunder echoing through the sky. No, not thunder, laughter, booming and ethereal. He stopped running, and looked around, trying to find the source of it. The sound echoed from behind him now, and Shane spun around. He was greeted by the sight of three giant skulls, not quite human but not quite animal, all looking at him with their blank amber eyes. Lightning flashed again, barely lighting the swirling shadows that made up its body. The middle skull moved closer to him, its snout stopping just inches from his chest, those eyes burning into his own.

                “What are you?”

                “ _We ARE you, as you are us. We are one.”_ The heads hissed out in unison before slowly dissipating into a shadowy mass, the eyes still glowing among the darkness. They blinked out of existence and the mass quickly moved forward, taking hold of Shane and seeping into his skin, burning like acid. The scent of something burning filled his nose and the taste of ash and blood invaded his mouth. Blood curdling screams filled his ears and his eyes could only see an infinite universe of pain and suffering.

                The sound of his own scream echoed in Shane’s ears as he sat upright in his bed, gasping and breathing heavily. He gripped his sheets in his hands, a tearing sound following the action. Shane looked down, finding his left hand overtaken by claws and ripping holes into his sheet. A sigh trickled out of his mouth as he winced in pain, the claws now slowly receding back into fingers again. It was going to be a long day of filming, exhaustion already flooding his system from the nightmare filled sleep. He seriously considered just calling Ryan and telling him he was sick, but he didn’t want to disappoint him by skipping out on the one day they were actually able to go on location and film some stuff.

                He hauled himself out of his bed, deciding to take care of the torn sheets when he got home later. Shane went and took a hot shower, hoping it’d snap him out of his morning funk, but no such luck graced him. Defeated, he depended on a cup of coffee to get him somewhat functioning, with halfway decent results. His phone chimed at him, letting him know that someone, probably Ryan, texted him. Shane set his coffee cup into the sink as he checked it, Ryan was waiting in the car for him outside.

                Shane quickly put on his shoes and grabbed his jacket that was hanging on the back of the couch as he walked out of his apartment. He locked his door and walked out into the parking lot and found Ryan pretty quickly. Ryan looked up from his phone as his car door opened and Shane easily folded himself into the front seat.

                “Looking a little rough there, you okay to do this?” Ryan asked, concern clearly visible on his face as he looked at Shane.

                “Yea, just had a late night, let’s get going.”

                They talked a bit about random things going on as Ryan drove, the cityscape slowly transitioning into unbroken patches of trees and fields. Eventually, a comfortable silence filled the car as the radio quietly played music. Shane had his head leaned against the glass of the window, watching as the landscape flashed by. It slowly began to lull him to sleep, but the crunch of a gravel road snapped him back into consciousness.

                Ryan was pulling up a gravel driveway towards a house, Shane assumed it was the one from the case. It loomed eerily among the trees, and Shane had a feeling of dread wash over him as they went closer to it. He had a bad feeling about this, but that wasn’t abnormal during the True Crime episodes, so he brushed it off for the time being.

                His feeling only grew as they began to bring the filming equipment inside. The film crew wasn’t there yet, wouldn’t be for a couple hours, and it gave them plenty of time to scope out where they wanted to film inside the house. They wandered around the top floors for a bit, peaking into rooms and talking about how to frame certain shots. Eventually, they began down the stairway to the basement, and the feeling crawled with each step down that they took.

                As soon as Shane’s foot hit the bottom step, he fell down to his knees. His control over the change was dangerously low here for some reason, and he could feel his fingers trying to become claws again. Shane, for the first time in a long while, was afraid. Ryan knew about this from what happened in the forest, but he still had most of the control. Here, the demon fought to be at the helm, and he wasn’t sure what it’d do to Ryan.

                “Get out of here.” Shane gritted out, fighting the sensation of being simply a passenger in his body. _Please, not now, anytime but now_ he thought to himself as he dug his fingers into the floor.

                “Are you okay?” Ryan asked from behind him, putting a gentle hand on his shoulder as he crouched down to try to look Shane in the face.

                “Nnnnh-” Shane collapsed as he finally lost the struggle, slipping into the passenger seat of his own body as the demon took over.

                “Shane!”

               

               


	2. I'm Always Walking As Somebody Else

                Ryan scrambled back into the corner of the room as the sound of bones popping and flesh tearing began. Shane lay in the doorway that led to the stairs, leaving Ryan no choice but to remain in the room and watch. He could see the bones moving around just beneath Shane’s skin, a disgusting sight but he couldn’t tear his eyes away. Shane always warned him not to look, and he should’ve listened. Ryan wouldn’t be able to get the sight of skin tearing away to make space for claws, or horns pushing through the skin of Shane’s scalp. Suddenly, Shane struggled back up to his hands and knees, coughing and gagging as teeth clattered to the floor. Dark blood dripped from his lips as he spat out the last few. He was still coughing, hard enough that it wracked his whole body. The blood slowly faded into a black liquid, the smell of it reaching Ryan even as far away as he was. It smelled like burning and death.

                Shane took a deep wheezing breath and started to push himself off of the ground. The sound of claws hitting the wall made Ryan flinch slightly as he rose to his full height, horns barely scraping the ceiling of the room. He turned towards Ryan, and he let out a strangled gasp at his appearance. Black smoke leaked out between Shane’s fangs as he began to walk towards Ryan. His eyes had no pupils, just a blank burning orange staring out from behind the building shadows. Ryan could feel his gaze, however, set upon him unwaveringly.

                “ _How charming.”_ Shane hissed out, his voice sounding like multiple layered into one. Ryan shivered; this was not the Shane that he was used to. His claws dragged against the concrete of the wall as he walked, a constant unnerving sound as he got closer. Ryan couldn’t do anything, finding himself paralyzed by the unbreaking eye contact.

                “ _As tempting as this may be,”_ Shane briefly paused in his steps, “ _I have… other matters to attend to.”_ He turned away from Ryan, breaking whatever spell he had been under. He found himself able to move again by his own will. Every time he blinked, he could see those eyes burned into the darkness, always watching him. Shane, or the demon now parading as Shane, walked back across the room to the stairs and began climbing up them. “ _You may follow, if you wish, but you may see something you will not forget easily.”_

                The sound of Shane’s shoes as he ascended the stairs echoed through the bare basement. Ryan had a choice to make: follow the demon that had taken over Shane’s body who was possibly about to end him or get the fuck out of this house. Of course, his curiosity seized the situation, tipping it towards follow and see what happens. Ryan stood up from the corner, his legs still a little shaky from the demon coming at him and not being able to move.

                Ryan made his way to the top of the stairs, finding the demon waiting for him there. A knowing grin crossed Shane’s face before he turned and walked into one of the adjoining rooms. They walked from room to room in silence, their footsteps the only thing ruining the quiet of the otherwise abandoned house. After covering all of the rooms on the first floor, they went up a set of narrow, rickety stairs to the second floor.

                “What exactly are you looking for?” Ryan asked, following a couple steps behind. He was eyeing a sizeable spider’s web up in the corner of the room, hoping that there wasn’t anything living in it any more.

                “ _Him.”_ In the blink of an eye, Shane was no longer in front of him but on the other side of the room at the top of the stairs. His claws were wrapped around something that looked like fog, swirling and struggling like it was trying to escape. Gradually, the fog took a more solid shape, that of a person instead of a misty cloud. “ _This, Ryan, is a spirit. Specifically,”_ the muscles in Shane’s arm bulged as he squeezed his grip around the spirit’s throat tighter, “ _the spirit of Daley Langer.”_

                Ryan walked over quickly to get a good look at the thing he’d been seeking to find for so long. He wanted to film this, but he had a feeling that the demon in control of Shane’s body wouldn’t take kindly to that. The spirit’s head turned towards him, sending shivers down his spine as he stared at it and it stared back. Shane squeezed its throat again, forcing it to look back at him.

                “ _I killed you once, now let me have the honor of making it permanent.”_ Shane hissed out at it, and it began to thrash violently, trying to escape his grip. It yanked at Shane’s arm, but it didn’t budge at all and the spirit grew more and more frantic. The scent of burning permeated the air again as the substance that made up the spirit started becoming darker, spreading from the point at which Shane’s hand was in contact with its throat. The darkness spread through the whole spirit as it screeched the shrillest note that Ryan had ever heard, causing him to cringe and cover his ears. The sound stopped suddenly when the spirit was fully consumed by the darkness, leaving Ryan’s ears ringing loudly in its absence. Shane removed his hand and the spirit disintegrated into a pile of ash on the floor.

                “What did you do to him?” Ryan asked cautiously as he stared at the ashes.

                “ _I eradicated him. He no longer exists on any plane, nor will he ever again. My quest is done, I will leave. Goodbye, Ryan, for now.”_ The demon in Shane’s body gave him one last grin and a little wave of his claws before Shane’s eyes rolled back into his head and he collapsed, sending ashes floating into the air at the disturbance of his body hitting the ground. Ryan rushed over to his body, kneeling down and moving him to make sure nothing broke when he hit the ground. He shook him for a few seconds, hoping it would wake him but no luck was to be had.

                Ryan sat on the floor, putting Shane’s head in his lap as he waited for him to wake up. His hands flitted through Shane’s hair and across his horns, reminding him of the many times Shane had fallen asleep on him during their movie nights on his couch. He paused his hands briefly to bend down and press a kiss to Shane’s forehead, wishing for him to wake up soon. As Ryan watched over him, he noticed the claws and horns beginning to recede, the darkness that had crawled up Shane’s arms beginning to be replaced with his flesh again. When the last inkling of darkness faded away, Shane sat up with a gasp, nearly knocking Ryan out with how fast he moved.

                Shane immediately turned to Ryan, eyes wide and scared. He brought his hands up to Ryan’s face, moving it this way and that, checking for him quickly for injuries before locking him into a kiss, tears running down his face.

                “You’re okay, thank god, I was so worried. I-” Ryan brought Shane into a hug, shushing him as he sobbed into Ryan’s shoulder. After a few moments, he pushed Shane back slightly so he could hold his face in his hands and see his face. “Hey, look at me, it’s okay. I’m okay. Breathe.” Shane took a couple quivering breaths, calming himself down a bit.

                “Can we leave please? I don’t wanna be here.” Shane asked as he scrubbed at his face with the edge of his sleeve.

                “Yea, lemme call the crew real quick, let’s go.” Ryan responded as he stood and turned to help haul Shane to his feet. He led him to the front door as he pulled out his phone, making a quick phone call. The crew hadn’t left yet thankfully, he caught them just before they were about to. A quick conversation later and he and Shane were back on the road, away from that house. Shane visibly relaxed once it was out of sight, pretty much passing out in his seat.

                This was going to be quite the conversation to have later, but for now Ryan was more than happy to let him rest after the whole ordeal. He drove in silence, not even the radio disturbing his thoughts as they began their trek back home, the country side blurring past.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading my fic!
> 
> If you wanna tag me in stuff, send me prompts, or yell with me about AUs or the latest episode of Unsolved, you can find me on tumblr [here!](http://www.skeptic-septic.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Kudos and comments are much appreciated!
> 
> Cheers!  
> -Lee


End file.
